The Sun and the Water
by Shellymer
Summary: The daughter of the sun is stolen to the sea. Old and new characters, lots of the GOOD pairings, r&r give it a chance! Open... if you dare.
1. Chapter 1

The water curled around me as I glossed through it. The other campers watched me with a kind of strange fascination, wondering how I did what I did, but also why. I did a back-flip like a dolphin, my favorite creature, then took one final run though of the only clear lake you'll ever see (of course, it has to be in Camp Jupiter/Zeus) and crawled ashore. The other kids gathered around me and cheered. Someone handed me a towel. I managed a smile and thanked people for coming. I was given a rose.

This was standard entertainment. I'm Marinella. My mother was a beautiful Naiad. My father is Apollo. I'm sixteen, and I want to make a few bucks. Performing on the water is easy, legal, and fun.

I love the camp. I have friends. There is a side of the camp full of cabins based on godly ancestor and based on legion. There are those of us with parents who are mythological creatures (not that I like that term…) but there are three girls and two boys that are the offspring of Naiads. We all share a little hut near the lake. We sit right off the Poseidon/Neptune cabin. We are all like brothers and sisters. We kind of are, to a degree.

When the crowd disperses, I fully get out of the water and go and sit on the gleaming dock. I run my auburn hair down with my towel and splash some water in my face, making my eyes glow celery-green, the color they always become in the water. But I've spent enough time there today. Besides, it's almost dinner. I trot back to my cabin, having to unglue my eyes from the sparkling waters that are my real home here.

Our cabin has blue walls and shells in the molding. We have bunk beds and trunks full of musical instruments. I reach into my closet and pull out a flowing tan dress. Joli, my friend from the Aphrodite cabin, must have left it for me. She loves to dress me up whenever she can. I always let her. It's hard to be best friends with Joli. She's 5'7, and has long, shimmering white-blonde hair that falls to the small of her back. Her eyes are an icy blue, and her face is perfectly shaped. She's been the nicest to me of all the campers, who (though they will always come down and watch) think it's weird that I do my water performances rather than just go get a job somewhere around camp for some denarii or drachma.

Aria walks into the cabin and starts strumming a guitar left on her bed. Aria. There is nothing likable about this girl. I can't believe that we are even related. We don't look alike or anything. Aria has a conquest at least twice a month. She has even black hair that is chopped short at the nape of her neck. Her eyes are deep chocolate, and her lips are always contorted in a strange grimace that masks any beauty from her square jaw. She likes to hang out with the wild and crazy Venus kids, about ten times worse than any Aphrodite kids. Her boyfriend this week is in Mars, and she's always swooning about how he'll beat up anyone for her on her command. I cannot stand her.

"Aw, did your little shy friend leave you a pwetty dwess?" she mocks.

"No. Did your friends give you back your undergarments since they stole them last night after you took them off to jump into the lake?"

Her look deepens, knowing I'm not going to play along.

"Fine, whatever, where's Hector?" He's our oldest brother. He's leaving this year. Aria and he get along well, but that is just because Hector gets along with everyone.

"I don't know. I haven't seen him all day. You going to dinner?"

"Nope. On a new diet. No dinner. Or breakfast," she cackles evilly, "or lunch!"

And she leaves the cabin.

Dinner is amazing, as usual. Joli and I sit together and giggle about how cute Kevin Beau is in Venus. But mostly I just do that. Because for Joli, that would be weird. So she giggles about how cute Hector is, and we are perfectly content.

When dinner is over, I trudge back to my cabin, belly full, and crawl into the top bunk, but not before slipping Aria's sleeping fingers into a bowl of hot water. Ha-ha.

Go me.


	2. Chapter 2

The day began really easily. I waded into the lake in a shimmering tankini, ready to warm up before breakfast in anticipation of my show at noon today. My hair, which I slept with in a long braid down my back, as just taken out and the auburn hair fluffed around my shoulders. I looked down at my hands and admired them. My greatest asset in swimming. They were like little paddles with their tips glowing an electric turquoise.

Aria, Hector, and all my other siblings were asleep in our cabin. The whole camp was silent, the air cool and expectant. The sun-warmed earth disappeared as I mad my way into the unforgiving lake.

A strange fact about me: I'm a water creature, but I can't stand deep water. I never know what's down there, and the idea of plunging so low bothers me. Sometimes I think I prefer the forest, where at least I can see everything and have a good grasp of where I am. With the water, it's all guesswork.

Which might have been my greatest warning, had I respected my own opinion.

I parted the still water with my long, nimble fingers. Frog stroke powered me to the other side of the little lake. I was slightly scared to be separated from the camp. I felt detatched, like something could swoop in and grab me and no on ewould know, like I was a shadow. I dove back in.

At first I thought that my dive had simply been really deep, sending me careening in a shower of bubbles into the deep parts that I don't like. But when I powered towards the surface, twenty seconds of not being able to break the water began to make me kick frantically. I wanted to scream, but I had to conserve my air. I pulled with all my might in my hand, kicked and kicked until my legs burned. I noticed subtle changes in the water around me. I was more buoyant, as if the water was helping me find air rather than pressing my down to it's depths.

Kelp caught my foot and wrapped me up. And then I felt it: coral. It sat on a ledge. I was near the surface. Of what, I was beginning to realize. The wind was blowing. The water was rolling. It was salt.

I was on the open ocean.


	3. Chapter 3

**this story is turning out better than i thought i would! I'm quite pleased. But are you? Review and let me know!**

**If you like my writing, read my other PJO fanfics!**

**The Graces - All about Piper and Jason's Romance and Family (reviewers say good OCs:))**

**and The Next Demigods - an awesome romance/adventure about four descendants of multiple gods and goddesses sent out on a quest. this has Percy and Annabeth fluff!**

**any way, you are brill/**

**Happy Reading!**

It was an hour before I'd come to terms that by some evil magic, I was stranded on the open ocean, in constant mortal danger, with no idea where to turn.

By that time I was starving. I wasn't thirsty because I am a water being and can drink the salt water. But still, starvation or freezing could mean the end of me in just a few days. Or sharks. I shivered a bit as the water lapped my cheeks. I couldn't feel my legs. A quick testing proved that I could, in fact, breathe underwater. I could only do this in salt water.

This was my last-resort course of action, but I had received nothing and no information, so I just began to swim. I swam aimlessly for hours on end, fighting the monstrous tides and knowing that below me were miles and miles of unseen, untamed ocean off the coast of who0knows-where. It was entirely possible I would never see the shores that these waters grazed on.

It was probably about ten hours of lazy swimming ( but I was going faster than I thought I would) when I received my first sign. It was a dolphin, gleaming and sky-blue, making t's funny noises at me. I made a few noises back. I knew it was with it's pod by the way it acted. It was a mother. I just … knew. But I was still very surprised when it allowed me to grab it's fin and be whipped along the ocean towards wherever the pod was going. For all I knew, I could be heading back to land. Or back into the middle of nowhere for what seemed like an infinite amount of miles.

I thought I was dreaming when I saw a boy next to me riding on another dolphin. I really did. I thought I was hallucinating. I mean, I had dove into a lake and come up in the sea. I was riding a dolphin, and breathing underwater.i would have expected a bit of this to not be real by now. But when I saw him the second time, he spoke to me.

"Are you real?"

"yes," I whisper, "I think."

"Did you have as crazy a day as I have?" he asks, and runs a hand through his curly sandy hair. He was pretty cute.

"yes," I say, "I dove into a lake and surfaced here… where are we?"

He stiffened for a minute.

"we're near Australia. Several miles away. The pod is taking us there. There are exactly three sharks in the area. None of them are close to contact."

I frown. "how do you know?"  
he smiles good-naturedly. "I'm a son of Oceanus. We got that power."

He winks at me. I smile.

"what's your name?"

"I'm Marinella. Mother's a naiad. Father's Apollo."

"Hey! I'm Merrick. My brother Sandy was behind me…" he looks behind him, "Ah, he's fine. So you're a daughter of Apollo. Sing me something."

But I was in shock. "WHAT? Your brother is back there probably drowning and you are okay with cruising away on a dolphin? Am I missing something?"

That's when the unthinkable happens. He flicks his hips and a huge tail, ten feet long, protrudes from his waist where his legs should be. It's beautiful, a very deep navy.

I gasp and nearly choke on the seawater thati can both breathe through and drink.

"why are you so shocked? I can swim, it's just that dolphins are a free ride. Sorry, I know it's ugly. Not as pretty as yours."

I'm about to slap him, thinking this is a weirdo pick-up line, but then something clicks. I can't feel my legs. Is it possible that I, too have a tail? A flick of my hips to prove I don't.

And I do. It's shimmering, pink, and studded with pearls.

Ew.

**Do you like Merrick? Like Marinella? Like their bloody awesome tails?**

**review and read my other ones!**


	4. Chapter 4

We have traveled for days.

After I got over the initial shock of having a tail, I use it! The waters out here, so far from human interaction, are probably the most pure, untouched places on earth. Surprisingly, the water out here is as crystalline and glassy it is as if we have reached the shore. But we see nothing, for we are just in a shallower spot.

I have stopped wondering about who or what exactly put me in this predicament. It is useless to wonder. It is far better to do.

Merrick and Sandy(who looks to be about twelve, a little replica of his brother) and I sleep on the dolphin's backs or simply float. We have begun to do only more of the latter, because the dolphins are gradually leaving us alone longer, perhaps now that we are stable mentally, or know where we are a little, or that we have been able to find food, or simply because the evil master that brought us hear is forcing them to leave. I have no explanation, nor can I convince them to stay. They are wild as Merrick, Sandy and I are beginning to feel.

We eat anything we can. We find raw fish do not bother our stomachs, neither does seaweed or other seaplants. We eat as though we belong to the ocean, and in a way, we do with your long, shimmering tailes that nearly never get cut and faithfully do the job each day we move closer to the shore that we cannot see but know is there.

After roughly three weeks, we begin to encounter strange things. There are remains of old ships at the depths of the tides. There are coins and even small pieces of garbage swirling in the crests of the waves.

We are nearing land. Sandy spotted it first.

"Look! Mar! Merrick! Look at it! Land!" he shouted excitedly. He was right. We saw a dusting of something on the horizon. We began to push ourselves to make it there before nightfall, not that it made too much of a difference in the ocean.

Then we saw the first warning: the hippocampus galloped towards us as though running away from something far worse. But as we stopped moving, shocked and scared, it did nothing but whinny at us as though imploring us not to swim on. But we do. It is only a hippocampus. I have seen them before. They really aren't that smart. We disregard the frantic mythological beast and move on.

It is then that we see the first one. She has long, dusty brown hair. I cannot see her eyes from here but they glow as mine do when she swims, which I see because even in her full-lwngth chiton, she jumps into the water to greet us. Why? I do not know. Merrick and sandy wear confused and somewhat afraid looks, glancing at me for the signal that I either know this woman and wasn't to swim out to her or to turn and flick our tails into the distance, never to see her again. She does not struggle against the water, but rather, glides as though there is a shark tail attatched to her rather than a mammal's; a dolphin's.

"Guys! Over here!" she calls, looking at Merrick. I expect him to dart me a look of fear, but he is entranced and quickly swims after her. I am stunned that Sandy follows, eyes full of her froggish beauty. I swim after them as fast as my tail can propel me, but they are going faster than I have ever seen them move before. The woman glides along so smoothly it's alien. The fact that she can swim faster than me bothers me. She has the upper hand.

This is nothing when predator becomes prey.

Before long we approach the strip of land, a tiny expanse of sand on a dingy bit of dry sand covering the rough sea. As soon as her fin hits sand it transforms to legs, and she is soaking and clearly tired. She is not pretty at all. Rather, she looks like a frog, and Merrick and sandy have lost their brainless all have legs and are standing on the land. Then she begins to sing. Out of the blue. An eerie tune that tickles my mind, but it does not threaten to leave me. Before I even really realize what she is doing to the boys, they have already turned on me with expressions identical to the ones they would wear had I viciously stabbed their mothers. I shove the woman down and the tune stops.

Merrick and sandy shake their heads.

"Mar, what happened?" they ask. I hit the woman on the head quickly and she is knocked out.

"I don't know. Guys, let's get out of here. We have a while before she wakes up."

"I don't remember anything…"

"sandy, she sang! She's a siren!" they still look confused.

"She… I don't know what she was going to do to you. The way you were looking at me, it was like you were ready to kill me! Please, Merrick, guys, I'll explain to you as we get away. She's – like…. Part SHARK! She can swim faster than any of us! We need to get out, get a head start before she wakes up…"

Merrick and Sandy sense the importance and we wade back into the water, ready to leave.

I've already transformed when the boys get out of the water.

They are standing on the sand, whispering.

"WHAT? Guys, let's GOO! What are you doing?" I frantically ask.

"Marinella…. I think we've met her before," says Merrick.

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